Designing a Typeface & Designing Its Launch

Ever wondered how to make your own font? Join us as James Junk breaks down how to make your own font that you can use in personal or client projects. He’ll cover the tools you need, what the process looks like, and show how he designed social to launch the font.

Timestamps:

0:00:49 — James introduces himself, explains how curiosity about type design led him to create and release three fonts since 2024.

0:04:36 — Overview of his font projects; introduces the three released typefaces and shares his philosophy of making type design approachable.

0:05:08 — Deep dive into Bruno, a hand-drawn font created in Procreate, including how he developed letters using a single "blueprint" S as the reference.

0:09:25 — Walkthrough of turning drawings into a usable font using Glyphs Mini, covering SVG exports, importing letters, and kerning adjustments.

0:18:28 — Discusses font marketing and launch strategy—creating a visual identity, social content, and storytelling around a typeface instead of simply posting the font.

0:34:00 — Breakdown of Reed, his second font, built entirely in Figma by modifying Arial Narrow and manually refining vector shapes.

0:40:12 — Covers Tiago, his most complex font, including texture challenges, software limitations, and switching from Glyphs to Fontself to solve technical issues.